


Cyanide

by sunaddicted



Series: 007 Games Fics 2k17 [11]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Waterboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 01:12:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11498655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunaddicted/pseuds/sunaddicted
Summary: [...]blooming flowers, ripening fruit, variegated butterflies fluttering too close to the sun and -Falling down.Spiralling out of control.Crashing into the now stormy sea to die a horrible death: drowned, salt water both soothing and corroding the burnt wings.





	Cyanide

**Author's Note:**

> Yeay, it's Villains Day!!!

_Cyanide_

Waterboarding, compared to other types of torture he had endured lately at the hands of the Chinese, was almost boring; you rationally knew that nobody was actually trying to drown you and, while unpleasant, it didn't leave too many damages behind.  After all, what was a bit of water in your lungs when you had danced with death several times as a Double-Oh agent?

Or maybe he was going insane. Tiago had considered that possibility - it wasn't as if there was much to do in a prison, apart from picking apart his own mind - and he wasn't quite ready to exclude it. Especially since it was starting to feel like there was someone else in his head, someone snake-like and vicious and thirsty for revenge in almost a biblical way - someone who called himself Raoul.

Someone Tiago was terrified of.  

So, he took the waterboarding sessions as chances to hide in a corner of his mind where not even Raoul could follow - or, if he managed, he couldn't actually make any damages: childhood memories weren't as fickle and fragile as many other parts of the psyche, a golden veil seemed to shroud them and not even the passing of time could make them lose their shine.  

The rag that was dropped on his face, and almost seemed to get stuck to his skin as if it had been imbued with glue, stank of mould and old water - Tiago couldn't help gagging, head instinctively tossing to the side to avoid choking on his own tongue and vomit. Not that he had enough in his stomach to actually throw up: it was only acid that came up his esophagus, inexorable like a slow column of lava sliding down the sides of a volcano.

Tiago didn't particularly enjoy it, but the trauma was necessary to trigger in his mind the necessary mechanisms to make sure that his consciousness got lost in the darkest and most protected depths of his memories; it couldn't be avoided and Tiago had learned to crave it, to crave the brutality that came with having his body vandalised in such a way.  

He did realise that it wasn't exactly an healthy way of thinking.

During training, they had called it dissociation - Tiago thought about it as salvation, to be completely honest. Maybe it would only make the pricks in Psych think about him as a dangerous and deranged - but sacrificable - asset to be kept under strict surveillance, instead of an agent that had endured hell to keep their precious  secrets hidden.

It had happened already, Tiago remembered it well - Raoul made sure that he remembered in great detail, murmuring in his ear that protecting them wasn't worth it; he had been put in a holding cell, not dissimilar to the one he was currently trapped in, and interrogated for days to make sure that he hadn't been twisted beyond reconnaissance  during captivity.

Really, those cells all looked the same - sleek metallic surfaces everywhere, a hole in the ground, neon lights flickering on a ceiling stained with humidity. Unless you were somewhere in Africa, then they looked like muddy huts so hot that every breath burnt like fire down dry and dehydrated lungs.

They smelled the same too: the stinking of fear apparently didn't change too much, independently from which country around the world had you captive - acrid with piss, shit, vomit and sweat that wouldn't be washed away until someone broke you out or you found your way to freedom in the form of a barely recognisable corpse.

And, in the end, no matter whether it was the Chinese or the Russians or MI6, the same exact things happened in them; people were pushed beyond salvation, human beings reduced to filthy bags of flesh and bones that had lost their minds under the pressure of torture - an instrument mankind had been honing for centuries, elevated it up to a form of art.  

The first splash of water was freezing, though Tiago was pretty sure that it seemed colder than it actually was because of the fever burning up his skin. If he thought about it, it almost brought him some relief - which was admittedly fucked up and rather badly at that.

But did it truly matter when he was going to die a horrible death, far away from home?

 _Home._ Tiago hadn't been home for a long time and he didn't mean London, with its grey skies and and grey streets and dark brown buildings. No, London had never been his home but it was a place he felt bound to - where a small and perpetually angry lady that didn't look half as much scary as she actually was had given him a purpose and tethered him to earth, keeping him from floating up to a world where only he existed.

Home had been the island his _abuela_ had bought when he was just a child; a small affair, nothing to boast about, even with his short legs Tiago managed to walk around it in a couple of hours. Back then, though, Tiago had felt like a prince in a secret fortress that other people could only dream of owning.

Behind his closed eyelids, Tiago looked down at his feet and smiled when he could see his toes wiggling in the golden sand, eyes narrowing to spot the small shells and shards of long-dead corals mixed up with it; it made the beach shine with a light bubbly pink colour under the strong sunrays that Tiago had always wondered about whether it truly was there or it was a product of his imagination.  

Even back then, Tiago hadn't burned easily thanks to his olive skin but still his abuela insisted on slathering sunscreen all over him “It doesn't matter whether you burn or not, _nene_ , you need to protect the deeper layers of your skin” she chided, a benevolent smile on her face even as she kept him still with a firm grip on his forearm before starting on a lesson about how his skin regenerated itself.

As a child, Tiago had listened attentively but hadn't asked himself why actually his abuela was so cultured; he didn't knew much about her, apart from the fact that she was his maternal grandmother and that she had taken him away from his family when his mother had refused to leave her abusive husband. He didn't remember his parents’ faces, nor their names: his whole family had been his abuela and the hoard of local animals that thrived on the island.  

For some reason, he'd never gone back; despite distinctly remembering just how much he'd missed the island he had grown up on, something in his heart had pushed him away from home - whether ambition or the fear of revealing his weaknesses to invisible enemies, he didn't quite know. Tiago had left for university and when his abuela had fallen sick and instead of moving back into the island to take care of her just like she had taken care of him, he had moved her to an hospital where she had slowly died; the last sound she had heard was the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard of the laptop, not the whispering of the breeze amidst the palm trees: it was Raoul’s biggest regret, the reason why he had yielded to MI6 and started to work for them.

It was his rather poor attempt at atoning for his abuela’s cold death.

To be completely honest with himself, it wasn't even that: it was his attempt at escaping from his past and the pain, without realising that he was throwing away all that had been good in his life up until he had nothing left but anger and loneliness eating away at his soul.

Olivia Mansfield had known how to take advantage of that and exploited the mix of feelings born out of grief to the country's advantage, turning him into someone he wasn't: in a way, she had been the shaping hand when it came to Raoul - a monster that, up to the moment the Chinese had started torturing him, had been leashed and soothed by the government authorised killings. Tiago didn't delude himself with the idea that Raoul was born in that particular prison, his voice was too familiar.

Too seducing to escape.  

Tiago walked along the beach, studying the way the waves foamed white at their crests, glistening under the strong sunlight, before languidly crashing on the wet sand, spreading out until there was only a thin veil of salt water lapping at his feet. He'd always found it a peaceful vision, one in which he could easily get lost: the colours captivated him, swirled in his head until they morphed into new images - blooming flowers, ripening fruit, variegated butterflies fluttering too close to the sun and -

Falling down.

Spiralling out of control.

Crashing into the now stormy sea to die a horrible death: drowned, salt water both soothing and corroding the burnt wings.

“An apt metaphor” Raoul murmured smugly, hands clasped behind his back and a gleefully cruel smile in place.

“Get out of here” Tiago ordered, turning on its heels to glare at the projection in his mind.

Raoul arched an eyebrow, a tiny but smug gesture of victory “I'm in your head” he pointed out rather uselessly, voice infused with disgust at the fact that even such a simple thing seemed to be out of Tiago’s grasp “I would love to get rid of you if I could, believe me”

“I'm the one in control”

Raoul nodded towards the butterflies still falling into the sea - there were thousands of them coming from the balm-like darkness of the small tropical forest, only to fly to the end of their already naturally short lives “Doesn't look like it”

A slap - or better, the heavy and metallic taste of blood - momentarily brought Tiago back to reality and he looked up at a blurry face as he coughed water up from the bottom of his lungs and prodded at the cut on the inside of his cheek. It was during those painful explorations that he remembered it: the capsule of cyanide embedded in his molar, the last resort and one he had never thought of using - not even when he'd been buried alive for two days in Saudi Arabia.

“But it's been months now, hasn't it?” Raoul's voice echoed inside his head and Tiago tried to shake it away: he wasn't supposed to manage to break the barrier of his consciousness and come at the forefront of his mind “The coward's way out must sound wonderful to you right now”

It did - especially if it meant that he would be rid of Raoul once and for all.

Tiago prodded the tooth again, jaw aching with the effort to avoid clamping down and breaking the crown so that he could pierce the capsule and let the poison do its job. 

“With your rotten luck, you'll survive it” Raoul hummed, sitting in the sand with his head angled up to soak up in the sun.

How Tiago wished that the prophecy hadn't revealed itself true.  


End file.
